Five years after the COVID pandemic upended the rules on vaccines, childhood vaccination rates continue to decline while parental opt-outs are rising. New CDC data shows the share of kindergartners with childhood vaccinations fell for the third straight year, while the number of parents claiming exemptions for their children rose to a record high for the third year in a row. However, the overall childhood vaccination rate remains high at 92.5%, down from about 95% before the pandemic. The opt-out rate, despite being at an all-time high, is still small relative to the population, at 3.6%--up from 3.3% last year.
The legacy media blames anti-vaccine sentiment and "vaccine skepticism" for this trend, but critics point out it was the government-medical establishment that caused much of the current skepticism. "During the pandemic, I think the government went overboard on its recommendations, including who got vaccinated, the mandates, and requirements for employment, etc," says Dr. Brian Joondeph, medical physician and commentator. "And now there's a backlash from that...the government has been dishonest, and it's slowly trickling out now."
States like Texas have moved to make it easier for parents to opt out of vaccines, while the Trump administration is looking to return transparency and accountability to agencies like the CDC and FDA under the leadership of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. But Joondeph warns that rebuilding that trust will be a long, slow process after what happened during the pandemic. "This trend is, I think, reflective of a lot of the misinformation that came out from health authorities---the CDC, FDA, etc---regarding vaccine safety and mandates," he says.
"There's now a hesitancy, because it's like fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me, and people are understandably more skeptical."
Photo: iStockphoto